This is something critical I need to do, so how better to get it in the forefront of my mind then to write about it. But on this matter I tend to procrastinate even though it’s so important to me. It just feels like a hurdle and a chore as I’m not as tech smart as I wish I was.
I need to find the best cloud storage option and not have to rely on external hard-drives which have devastatingly failed on me in the past. After I have painstakingly copied files (mostly precious family photos and videos), one day when I plugged it into my computer it just refused to read anything. Just too fragile an option to rely on when it comes to those priceless memories.
Loosing digital copies of photos with a hard drive totally failing on you would be close to loosing a physical family album to a fire. There is no way of recovery. Reminds me of how my aunt lost the only copy of her wedding slide show (it was all in slide show format in the 70′s). Or how I’ve lost some old style videos (think 80′s VCR) to fungus.
I like the idea of storing stuff somewhere where you can assess it from any device, but I also need it to be exceptionally private and secure. I’m not interested in the social element of sharing photos etc. Just purely safe storage. And lots of storage space too. I’m thinking at least 500 GB. Even better 1 TB because you’ll always need more space as time goes on and you accumulate more of those precious memories.
Another thing I’m looking at is ease of upload. If the uploading is going to take forever (like on flickr) and limited to 200 files each time, then it’s going to be a major pain.
As I’m ditzy when it comes to technical stuff, I also need it to be user friendly but not like the Apple Cloud where I don’t really know where my stuff goes and I don’t feel in control of it. I like to be able to manage and delete files as though they were on my own computer.
Need your help kind readers. Are you using cloud storage for personal photos and videos? Which do you recommend for an iMac user?
